A rally for healthcare reform and passage of the Affordable Health Choices Act,
was held in San Francisco yesterday.
Photos by Luke Thomas
By Luke Thomas
September 3, 2009
As Congress wraps up its summer recess, healthcare reform rallies are being held across the nation to call on Congress to pass HR 3200, the Affordable Health Choices Act.
Organized by MoveOn.org, Center for Community Change, Democracy for America, Doctors for America, Health Care for American Now, and TrueMajority, a rally held yesterday in San Francisco drew as many as 5,000 Bay Area residents to Alioto Plaza.
“When Congress gets back in session right after Labor Day, it’s time for them to immediately pass HR 3200, the Affordable Health Choices Act,” UC Berkeley Center chair Ken Jacobs told rally participants who held signs that read “Doctors for Reform,” “Healthcare not Warfare,” “Healthcare: Yes, Insurance companies: No,” “Pre-existing condition? Good luck!” and “Blue Dogs: Heel!”
“In the current system we have today, people can be denied healthcare coverage because they have a pre-existing condition, charged more because they’re older, charged more because of their age or their gender,” Jacobs said.
If enacted, HR 3200 would provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and control spiraling costs in health care spending. It would also enact insurance market reforms to prohibit discrimination and rescission practiced by health insurance companies.
It would also create a public option that would compete with private health insurance for the 45 million Americans currently without health insurance. Financial risk for the public option would be spread between employees, employers and the federal government.
In response to the nation’s call for reform, insurance and pharmaceutical industry lobbies have mounted disinformation and fear campaigns in a desperate attempt to protect the status quo and their profit-driven monopolies.
The US is the only industrialized country that does not provide a form of socialized medicine to its citizens. It also spends twice as much per capita for healthcare.
“The astroturf that we are seeing on TV, inside of Congress, at people’s town hall meetings – that is being paid for by the insurance industry of this country,” said former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.
“We also know that the vast majority of Americans share our sentiments, that we will repudiate the politics of fear being waged by the insurance industry,” Peksin added.
Former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.
Luke Thomas
Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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The Hunger Site
September 4, 2009 at 9:43 am
If enacted, HR 3200 would provide additional health care for some, but will not do anything to control spiraling costs in health care spending (Ask Howard Dean about Malpractice tort reform, or have loosen the grip of the AMA to restrict the supply of medical professionals). It will create a public insurance company to compete with private health insurance companies, but that company will be artifically subsidized by taxes on those Americans lucky enough to still be employed. Again, the middle class, who will not see any benefit, will be stuck with the bill, and the size of Big Government will continue to grow. Reform is needed, including more regulation of health insurance companies, but Pelosi’s bill (she is the leader of the Congress) is CRAP. I am no fan of Health Insurance Companies and Pharmaceuticals, but Pelosi and the rest of the Dems have sidestepped real reform to keep their pockets full of Trial Lawyer and AMA CASH.